Arizona tribal member nearly deported after Iowa jail issues ICE detainer by mistake

https://azmirror.com/2025/11/12/arizona-tribal-member-nearly-deported-after-iowa-jail-issues-ice-detainer-by-mistake/

Arizona tribal member nearly deported after Iowa jail issues ICE detainer by mistake

The woman’s family had to scramble to prove she was Indigenous and shouldn’t be turned over to federal immigration authorities
BY:
GLORIA REBECCA GOMEZ
-
NOVEMBER 12, 2025

A day before Arizona native Leticia Jacobo was scheduled to be released from an Iowa jail, her mom visited to verify pickup details with the staff. Ericka Burns was excited to drive her daughter home after spending a month apart and wanted to make sure Jacobo wasn’t forced to wait a minute longer than necessary. But jail staff told Burns that Jacobo wouldn’t be let go because she would be turned over to immigration agents — even though Jacobo is Native American.

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“My sister said, ‘How is she going to get deported if she’s a Native American?’ and ‘We have proof,’” Nunez recounted. “They said, ‘Well, we don’t know because we’re not immigration and we can’t answer those questions. We’re just holding her for them. So, when they pick her up tonight they’re going to go ahead and deport her to wherever they’re going to take her, but we have no information on that.’”

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What’s an ICE detainer?
Polk County Jail has a 287(g) agreement with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. That partnership authorizes local law enforcement officials to perform some immigration enforcement functions, including preparing removal paperwork, interrogating people who have been arrested about their citizenship status and comparing their biographic information against U.S. Department of Homeland Security databases to identify people who may be eligible for deportation. The purpose of the program is to cut down on the investigative legwork for ICE and increase deportations. Police officers trained under the 287(g) program can issue ICE detainers based on the information they’ve gathered or at the written request of federal officials. Detainers allow a person in custody to be held for an extra 48 hours after their scheduled release time, even if they have not yet been convicted of a crime, to give ICE agents time to take them into custody. Because detainer requests don’t require probable cause and aren’t mandatory in the same way that judicial orders are, some law enforcement agencies choose to ignore them, wary of the legal consequences. The courts have ruled that detainers are potentially unconstitutional because they result in prolonged imprisonment, and multiple lawsuits have been filed after detainers were issued against U.S. citizens.

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Mistake or discrimination?
Jacobo’s ordeal highlights the fallout of aggressive immigration enforcement for Native Americans. In January, Navajo Nation officials reported more than a dozen Indigenous people in Arizona and New Mexico had been questioned or detained by federal immigration authorities.

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